Antrim House was founded in 1990 to promote the work of emerging as well as established poets and has been especially active since 2001. Recently, we have also published memoirs and photo essays. Writers who have produced a body of work sufficient to create a chapbook or full-length collection are invited to submit 3 pages as a sample. Send your work with an e-mail address or SASE to Antrim House, 21 Goodrich Rd., Simsbury, CT 06070. You will receive a response as quickly as possible, though your submission will not be returned. You may also submit electronically to eds@antrimhousebooks.com.

Should your MS. be one of the few accepted for publication, the publisher (an award-winning author himself) will offer editorial advice and work with you collaboratively to perfect your forthcoming book. He will see to it that this book is a thing of beauty, paying close attention to every aspect of its design and text, conferring with you often concerning both. He will also be happy to assist in the selection of those whose comments appear on the back cover. You will never deal with an intern or an assistant, only with the publisher himself; and your book will never be allowed to go out of print.

Our marketing includes a) featuring titles on the Antrim House website with biographical and critical commentary, pictures of poet and book cover, sample poems, ordering information, upcoming events, and "seminar room" entries (new work, notes, images, reviews, study guides, etc.); b) securing or helping authors to secure feature stories in newspapers; c) submitting press kits to reviewers and radio/on-line disseminators of poetry; d) producing a variety of promotional material (e.g., news releases, order forms, bookstore displays); e) submitting books for national awards or helping authors do the same; and f) sending to an extensive mailing list periodic notices of recent publications and upcoming events. Antrim House authors are asked to do as much as possible to arrange their readings/book-signings, distribution to bookstores, and other sorts of marketing/promotion. However, the publisher provides considerable support by calling upon his knowledge of the literary community in Connecticut and beyond. He has been an active member of that community for many years and for nine years directed the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. His credits include many awards from Connecticut and national arts organizations, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Connecticut Center for the Book.

Antrim House strives to publish the best collections of poetry by writers from all parts of the country, with a special emphasis on emerging writers. We also publish memoirs and photo essays. We are very selective, preferring work that does not cater to the academic establishment but is part of the continuum of work produced by writers the likes of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, Mary Oliver, Mark Doty, Jane Kenyon, and Galway Kinnell. We also stress the importance of oral presentation, encouraging our authors to perform their work as widely as possible, in part to continue the ancient bardic tradition, making poetry a living, breathing art form; in part to promote an appreciation of poetry in a country where it is denigrated; and in part to inspire young poets. We hope to go beyond traditional publication practices and cultivate wider appreciation of a vibrant literary culture that too often goes unnoticed in the midst of pop culture’s noise-making.

While we have no bias toward formal or informal, traditional or innovative work, we do insist that Antrim House writing be both comprehensible and resonant, rewarding multiple readings by revealing itself gradually. When the poetry we publish has a political slant, we like it to abide by Emily Dickinson’s dictum: “Tell all the Truth but tell It slant.” That is, we favor the work of a writer like Martín Espada, whose political poetry is embedded in narrative rather than worn on the sleeve of the page. We also believe that all good poetry is essentially political. If we publish poetry that might be termed “confessional,” we insist that it be universal and not purely personal. And we believe that high seriousness and high humor can cohabit. We side with Shakespeare against Racine. As noted before, we are also interested in publishing photography that has a literary component. In line with our interest in the arts, we strive to produce books that are as handsome in appearance as they are energetic in content. Each Antrim House book is a work of art.

We believe that our emphasis on clarity combined with resonance has led to the promulgation of work that has wide appeal to a general audience. The Antrim House publisher/editor’s experience as the founder and director of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which continues to attract enthusiastic audiences numbering in the hundreds, confirmed his belief that "poetry, like bread, is for everyone." He knows that when it speaks simply and plainly while at the same time retaining artistic integrity, it can be as popular an art form in this country as it already is in others. The unusually large number of submissions being received by Antrim House indicates that we are doing something right. Despite the numbers, however, we are determined to continue our attention to every detail that ensures excellence in both content and design.